An Arab-American woman sees signs of hope.

June 04, 2009

Obama's Speech: The Roundup

I appreciate the symbolism of Obama's speech in Cairo. It's a significant gesture and took some guts. I am also tickled that my president has a new nickname in the Arab world: Abu-Hussein. For the rest of it - well, we shall see.

Other people are better qualified to pontificate. Among the most interesting:

The Arabist, an Arab journalist in Cairo, writes paragraph by paragraph response.

As'ad Abu-Khalil has extensive coverage. His long, no-line-break rant here, worth reading. His News Hour appearance here. His link to another commentator here . I don't care to take on Abu-Khalil's negative view of events, but he knows whereof he speaks, and his critique must be considered. He gives no quarter to corruption and abuse of power.

Philip Weiss,
who was there in the room with our President, having just returned from
a visit to Gaza. Weiss has had a transformation in the last five years.
Scales of prejudice and tribalism have dropped from his eyes.

BBC roundup of reactions, including Hamas, Hizbullah, Teheran, Israel and other parties. Alison Chaiken points out that the NY Times (and the BBC) quote negative Hamas statements, whereas Al Jazeera pulls a more positive quote from the same spokesman.

The most important part of Obama's speech
today, I thought, was his invoking of the Nakbah and the Holocaust. In
fact, urging the Muslim world to reckon with the legacy of the
Holocaust in understanding Israelis is far more honestly a legacy of
South Africa than is Obama's false suggestion, in passing, that the
ANC's struggle against apartheid was based on non-violent civil
disobedience a la MLK... For the record, Bam, the ANC never renounced
violence until the regime agreed to democracy... But here's my 2006
piece on What Arab Holocaust Deniers Should Learn from Apartheid.

Saifedean Ammous posted a note on Facebook which he permits me to reprint, below the jump.

Saifedean Ammous is skeptical:

The real problem with Obama’s speech, simply, is that everyone is talking about it.

The PR geniuses who ran the greatest presidential campaign since FDR
seem to have now been handed the reins of Obama’s foreign policy. PR
campaigners are an improvement over the warmongers of the Bush
Administration, but that, obviously, is not saying much.

For almost a month, everyone everywhere has been talking about Obama’s
speech in Cairo as if it actually matters for anything. Obama’s
PR/Foreign Policy team have built it up to be such a giant spectacle
that people seem to have forgotten that at the end of the day, it is
nothing but a speech by a man who has given several hundred speeches
over the last two years. It is a collection of sounds coming out of a
man’s mouth. It matters for nothing. He said nothing new, added nothing
new, and affected nothing real in any real way.

If there was anything important in this speech, he could’ve announced
it at any point in the last few weeks of build-up and gotten it over
with. But creating this giant spectacle turned this speech into a
global quasi-religious interpretation-fest where everyone and their dog
analyzed, with ridiculous detail, every last word Obama said, how he
said it, and how he looked when he said it.

So we now know what Obama’s new foreign policy is going to be: talk,
speeches, platitudes, oratory and rhetoric. The good news, as Churchill
would have it, is that “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”.
I’d gladly sit through 12 Obama speeches a day over one of Bush’s wars.
The bad news, however, is that this jaw-jaw-fest has very sneakily
turned everyone’s attention from what the US Government does, to what
its talismanic leader says. There is no better recipe for stalling,
doing nothing and maintaining the status quo.

Obama has not changed anything from Bush’s policy on Iraq. His policy
on Afghanistan and Pakistan may well be even worse than that of Bush.
There can hardly be any cause for optimism over Iran with Dennis Ross
in charge of that file, issuing ultimatums and bringing his unique
brand of warmongering-masquerading-as-peacemaking
to dealing with Iran. And, aside from a few bits of jaw-jawing about
settlements, Obama has not offered anything concrete about what he
plans to do about the fanatic Israeli regime that continues its mass
murder, land-theft and persecution of the Palestinians, or about his
government’s relentless economic, military and diplomatic support for
that regime.

A charitable interpretation might hold that Obama really does seek to
bring about real change on all these issues, and is biding his time
with speeches and friendly gestures to set the stage for this change.
But the reality on the ground, unfortunately, speaks louder than any
words. Churchill’s quip might not apply here since, after all, the
war-warring continues regardless of the jaw-jawing. Worse, the
excessive fixation on speeches is helping distract everyone’s attention
from the real problems of unending war.

I would love for nothing more than my skepticism to be misplaced.

Philip Weiss has posted a video documenting really awful reactions in Jerusalem. I won't link to it. You can probably find unpleasant reactions on the Arab side if you search. I don't care to give a lot of attention to the naysayers although I feel obliged to print the skepticism of experts in the area such as Ammous and Abu-Khalil. Critical thinking matters. Vicious racism does not.

I will not, therefore, indulge in the game of "see how horrible the other side is." Hence I will continue to ignore unproductive comment as much as possible. For my own serenity, I have to focus on what works and what is possible.

Comments

I agree with a lot of what Saifedean Ammous is saying, although I do think that Obama announced a break with the Bush Administration's handling of Israel in the speech. In addition, Obama's tentative extension of a hand towards Iran (and Cuba for that matter) is significant.

I too was sceptical about Obama's remarks about non-violence. We pay attention to Arab nations because they spawn violence and have oil. Without the threat of violence, Israel and Egypt, which do not possess oil, would slowly drift off our radar map.

Thanks Leila for providing the many links to analysis of the speech. I have read abu-khalil's and of course, the eloquent and deeply insightful Ali Abunimah, and look forward to the others you have here.

I found the speech to be a confirmation and re-iteration of past and ongoing policy. People seem to be making much of Obama's words which appear to humanize Palestinians and their suffering, yet there is nothing new in that either:
GW Bush, Rose Garden, 24 June 2002: "It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve... My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security."

BH Obama, Cairo University, 4 June 2009: "They endure the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable... The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security."
(that is from the AngryArab blog.)

The point is we don't exactly go around in state speeches saying we hate Arabs.

We have a "special relationship" with Israel, we are upping aid to Israel, we don't say a word about the assault on Gaza, the endless Israeli brutality and violence in the West Bank, or getting rid of the settlements. We lecture Palestinians about violence and maintain the fiction that this is an equal conflict. How on earth is any of this going to lead to change for the besieged people of Palestine?

I am shocked at the number of commentators who've taken Obama to task over his words on violence. He didn't mention it in isolation but within the much wider context of other similar struggles against oppression and discrimination. Detail aside, he was saying "look you have a legitimate cause, but you need to re-think the methods". Dismissing his words as nonsensical or taking the "oh yeah, well what about . . . " tack is self defeating and misses the point entirely. On the subject of Holocaust denial, so long as nobody knows what the Palestinian discourse on that actually is, there will be plenty of people more than willing to step in and put words in their mouth.

Nadia, if I understand you-and perhaps I don't-you articulate perfectly why Obama's words are so frustrating and downright offensive to those of us who support justice, truth, and human rights. It is not that we miss his point-we don't like it. It is Israelis, not Palestinians, who commit the overwhelming majority of violent acts in the region-and ALL of the land and water theft. (Note that there has not been a suicide bomb since 2004. Note the number of deaths of Palestinians compared to Israelis. Etc.) Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust, nor is there is a substantive denial of the Holocaust by Palestinians.

Anne, I am not an American citizen, so perhaps on that score I have fewer expectations of what an American president can or cannot (or should or shouldn't) say in a public speech. I don’t need Obama to tell me who commits the overwhelming acts of violence in the region – yes it would be nice if he had said all the things that As’ad Abu Khalil accused him of not saying, but I don’t see that happening any time in the near future, do you? The Palestinians are far and away the weakest party in the Arab-Israeli conflict, politically and militarily. But they are fighting an enemy that is morally bankrupt, and I think what Obama was trying to do was to ask the Palestinians to engage the Israelis and the world with their cause on a different and more sophisticated level than just rocket firing. I don't hold out much hope of the Israelis suddenly dropping their arms and saying they reject violence. Many Israelis have turned to fascism, with all the dangerous attitudes that implies, and it is the Palestinians’ responsibility to challenge those attitudes at every turn, in words and in deeds.

Cookbooks

Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for EveryoneIndispensable - I use it all the time, and give it as presents to brides, young people starting out, etc. Not for vegetarians only - hence the title - a great resource for anybody wanting delicious recipes for vegetables, grains and legumes. Great sauces and salads, too.